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HEAD-TO-HEAD: Blackrock vs First State

FSA compares the Blackrock GF Asian Dragon Fund and the First State Asian Growth Fund.

by Fund Selector Asia 28 September 20181 August 2022

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Andrew Daniels, Morningstar

Introduction

At the beginning of 2018, fund selectors had high hopes for Asia-Pacific ex-Japan equities.

Respondents to FSA’s Asset Class Research in late 2017, for example, indicated strong interest for these assets. They stood out with the highest net number of potential buyers – which is calculated as a difference between the percentage of respondents who said they would add them to their allocation and the percentage who said they would reduce them in the following 12 months.

However, Asia-Pacific (ex-Japan) funds for sale in Hong Kong were among the bottom performers among regional equity products. According to FE, the category has returned -6.55% year-to-date.

China and Korea, accounting for 35% and 17% of the weighting in the index, respectively, contributed the most to the loss. Year-to-date, the MSCI China Index returned -7.71% while MSCI Korea was -9.15% in US dollar terms.

Against this backdrop, FSA talked to Andrew Daniels, Hong Kong-based senior analyst for manager research at Morningstar, for a comparative analysis between two Asia ex-Japan funds: the Blackrock Asian Dragon Fund and the First State Asian Growth Fund.

	Blackrock Asian Dragon	First State Asian Growth
AUM	$3.6bn	$560.5m
Inception	March 2003	June 1988
Manager	Andrew Swan	Richard Jones and Alistair Thompson
Cumulative return*	42.16%	22.52%
Alpha YTD**	-2.45	6.66
Volatility YTD**	9.14%	6.98%
Morningstar analyst rating	Bronze	Silver
Morningstar star rating	***	****
FE Crown fund rating	***	**
OCF	1.09%	0.91%

Source: Morningstar, FE Analytics

*Trailing three years to 28 September

**Year-to-date to 28 September

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